


Where We Are

by taispeantas_laethuil



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dancing, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 11:06:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10463478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taispeantas_laethuil/pseuds/taispeantas_laethuil
Summary: As the Arl recovers, Redcliffe Village celebrates. Leliana would like to join them.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hergreywarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hergreywarden/gifts).



Redcliffe, or so it seemed to Elissa, was more or less two-thirds mud with a little dry dirt packed in for variety. She supposed that was probably true of most of the villages in southern Ferelden, but that didn’t make it any more fun to look at. A part of her longed for the white walls and red cobblestones of Highever, and probably always would.

The peasants were lively enough: Tomas dancing arm in arm with another man whose face was half-swathed in bandages, a pair of elves swaying together on the edge of the fire, a young dwarf who looked to be no older than twelve chasing a pack of boys around the makeshift banquet tables, demanding that they give her her bow back. Nearby an older woman, clearly the young dwarf’s mother, looked on and sighed in clear despair, the way Elissa’s mother had once done over her.

Silently, she tipped her tankard in the direction of the dwarven lass. Hopefully that tendency would give her better luck than it had given Elissa.

“Not joining in on the festivities?”

Elissa jumped. Leliana was standing right next to her. She had been for some time, if the sly little smile playing around the corners of her mouth was anything to go by.

“Of course I am,” Elissa replied, showing Leliana her ale. “See? I have a drink and everything. It’s very festive, these festivities.”

She took a too-large gulp of ale that she had to swallow twice to get down. There. Now the festive spirit was within her.

“You still aren’t joining in,” Leliana teased, an almost singing lilt to her voice.

“I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what you’re expecting me to do,” Elissa said. “Finish this drink and get another one?”

“You could always join in the dancing,” Leliana suggested.

Elissa nodded, and at a loss as to what to do next. She decided that taking another gulp of ale was probably in order.

“You can’t tell me that you don’t know how to dance,” Leliana prodded.

“I am trying very hard to not do that,” Elissa replied once she'd swallowed.

“I would have thought that dancing would have been a part of the education of a bann’s daughter, no?”

“It was definitely supposed to be,” Elissa admitted. “I… may have jumped out of a window once. And paid someone from town to dress in my clothing so that if mother peeked in it would look like I was attending my lessons.”

“Did that work?”

“Not for very long.” Still, she'd gotten her way in the end, in the sense that she still didn't know how to dance.

For a moment, they simply sat there, watching. On the other side of the bonfire, Mother Hannah was organizing a bunch of younger people into three lines.

“Do you find it so odious, dancing?” Leliana asked.

“That dancing wasn’t really the part I hated,” Elissa said. “It was everything attached to the dancing that was not so great.”

Mother had always been insistent that she learn to sew (so she could get a husband) and cook (so she could get a husband) and keep house (so she could get a husband) and study poetry (so she could get a husband) and yes, dance (so she could get a husband). Elissa was not a particularly big fan of husbands. She’d disdained the whole of her mother's wishes in favor of horse riding, archery, training Dashiel to be a proper hunting dog, and dagger-throwing lessons with disreputable women in town.

Which left her in her currently state: while she- and Dash!- were perfectly capable of killing darkspawn, she had only seven socks to her name, and all of them had holes.

Sometimes she really wished Mother had framed those lessons as anything other than a way to get a husband. Why did she even have to get married at all- Fergus was married and had produced an heir and everything!

He _had_ been married, at least- _had_ had an heir, at one point.

Other times she wondered if Mother might not have had an inkling of what was coming- if she’d been so eager to see Elissa married because she knew that Howe was not to be trusted. Bann Loren was, after all, not exactly the Arl’s biggest fan, and if nothing else, Caer Oswin was a very heavily defended fortress. A match with Dairren would have been advantageous in that way, if things had gone differently and she’d been allowed to march openly on the Howes and their holdings.

Mother had been so disapproving when she’d invited Iona to her room instead. That was at least half the reason why she’d done it.

Leliana gently yet firmly, placed her hand on Elissa’s wrist, and lowered the tankard before she could take another gulp.

“Dance with me?”

“I am really not good at it,” Elissa warned her. “I’ll make you look like a fool.”

“Are we not all fools in love?”

She had her there. Elissa put her tankard aside, and let herself be lead out to the packed dirt square.

~*~

It was, at first, every bit as awkward as she’d feared it would be. She didn’t know how to move, let alone move with Leliana to the time of the beat. She didn’t know how close to stand. She didn’t know where it was appropriate to put her hands on Leliana, but with everyone watching she knew she shouldn’t put them where she wanted them to be.

And everyone was watching. Very, very closely watching.

“Don’t be so tense,” Leliana chided as Elissa narrowly avoided stepping on her toes for the umpteenth time. “They’re only curious.”

“As to why I can’t dance?” Elissa winced as she actually _did_ step on Leliana’s toes. “Sorry.”

Leliana pulled back a bit, frowning.

“Sorry,” Elissa repeated. “I did warn you, though.”

“Yes, you did,” Leliana said with a sigh. She raised her hand to cup Elissa’s face, and leaned in, standing on tiptoe. For a moment, Elissa was certain that she was going to kiss her, right now, with every peasant in the village watching, and then she whispered “Would it help if I made this one of our bard lessons?”

“Is dancing a bard skill?” Elissa asked. “Don’t you just stand to the side, pretending to a minstrel and sneaking off to look at papers while everyone is still crying over Andraste’s mabari?”

“Only when it’s a very slow night in Ferelden,” Leliana replied. “It’s all part of the Game. Someone who wishes to distract you, or dissuade you, or even point you out to one of their allies will ask to dance with you. One of your allies might ask to dance with you, to pass on information. Or you might even ask someone to dance, for any of the reasons I’ve mentioned, or simply to observe the room.”

She was still standing very close, pressed up against Elissa’s chest, her breath hot against her ear. Elissa was fairly certain that the Maker could see how brightly she was blushing from His throne.

This would be a very good time for Leliana to kiss her. Instead, she pulled back slightly, and said “Let’s begin with the last one, shall we? Focus on the people around us- not the way they look at you, but the way they look at one another.”

“You aren’t going to teach me to dance first?” Elissa asked.

“You can follow my lead,” Leliana said. She took Elissa’s left hand and placed it on her shoulder, settled her own left hand on Elissa’s waist, and clasped their right hands together. “This need not be fancy- it only need _be_.”

“Right,” Elissa said, and tried not to stumble.

“Let me focus on the dancing,” Leliana repeated. “You look around. Try to tell me something about the people around us.”

“Right,” Elissa repeated. “So. Who do you want me to focus on?”

“How about the elves over there? What can you tell me about them?”

They were the couple she’d noticed earlier, still swaying together but having moved farther away from the campfire. She snuck glances at them from over the top of Leliana’s head, as Leliana hummed a countermelody to the song the fiddler was playing: some gently lilting song that Elissa didn’t recognize. The first line that Mother Hannah had organized on the other side of the bonfire began to stamp their feet on the ground: heel, toe, heel, toe…

“The elves,” Leliana reminded her gently.

Gentle as it was, it also reminded her that she was dancing, and also that she couldn’t dance. She stumbled onto Leliana’s toes again.

“I am really not good at this,” Elissa mumbled, trying to pull away.

“Focus,” Leliana said, reeling her back in with the hand on her waist. “Elves.”

The pair of elves had stopped dancing as another pair of elves- this one much older- closed in them.

“Hahren,” said the woman she was supposed to be watching, given a little curtsy.

The older woman shook her head. “Really Maura, if you can’t bring yourself to call me Mother, please try to call me Senna.”

The second line began clapping their hands. Leliana guide her through a twirl that brought them close to Tomas and his companion, who was saying “- start calling myself One-Eyed Jimmy, Nan’s ram has been calling me that for _years_...”

The four elves were still in conversation.

“They’re married,” Elissa whispered to Leliana, just barely managing to bend her head down and not mess up their rhythm. “The older couple are his parents, I think. His mother’s someone important- is hahren a title down here?”

“It’s elvhen, as I understand it,” Leliana replied. “It means leader, I think.”

Elissa wasn’t sure why the idea of elves having leaders surprised her, but it did.

“What else?” Leliana asked.

“I’m not sure-”

Just as the third line opened their mouths and began to sing ( _Oh Maker whose blessed bride_ -) there was a lot of shrieking as several boys barrelled into the lines, running at full tilt and scattering people in every direction. The dwarven girl had reclaimed her bow, and was now promising to use them for target practice. She did not have any arrows to go with her bow. That did not seem to lessen the boys’ terror of her in the least.

“Lace Alexandrina Harding!” the dwarven woman called, causing her to stop short with an audible “Uh-oh.”

It was such a familiar scene to Elissa that she immediately started to laugh, trying to smother her snorting giggles in Leliana’s hair.

“It is not that funny,” Leliana protested, pulling back slightly.

“It is,” Elissa said.

“Do you want to help Giles with his flock this summer?” the mother asked.

“Yes,” Lace replied.

“Because that’s a grown-up job, and you need to behave like a grown-up to do it.”

“I need my bow to do it too!”

“It’s funny because that dwarf could be me,” Elissa said. “Hopefully, she actually sat still long enough to learn to sew.”

“Her mother is a seamstress, so that is very likely,” Leliana said.

“Really?” Maybe she could get her socks fixed.

Leliana was quiet for a moment. They were no longer facing one another, but rather standing side by side, still holding hands.

“You’ve missed the obvious,” Leliana said.

“What?” Elissa asked. The last time she’d missed the obvious, Leliana had been trying to invite her into the tent.

“They’re all alive because of you,” Leliana told her.

“You might have had something to do with that,” Elissa said. “And Alistair. And Dash. And the mages from the Circle.”

“You,” Leliana insisted, knocking her shoulder. “You were a hero, and these people will live out their lives now, because of you.”

This was the hardest part. Loving Leliana was easy- living up to that best version of herself that Leliana saw when she looked at her, the one who was not merely of noble blood but _noble_ in soul and deed, that was much harder.

“Don’t tempt fate,” Elissa chided, instead of saying anything like that. “There’s still a Blight on. And who knows, maybe when that’s done a secret elf army will invade, or the Fade will open up and start spewing demons everywhere or there will be a sudden influx of bears.”

“But at least they will have survived the undead,” Leliana said.

“Yes, there is that,” Elissa said.

“Take the compliment, hero,” Leliana admonished.

“You’re not going to start calling me that, are you?”

“It does have a certain right to it,” Leliana said thoughtfully. “Elissa Cousland, the Hero of Redcliffe Village, perhaps.”

“No.”

“The Hero of the Fifth Blight, then.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Elissa protested, more than a little alarmed.

“Very well,” Leliana said. “I’ll wait until after the archdemon is dead.”

Elissa sighed in exasperation.

She could argue, and point out that slaying archdemons was the work of decades, if not ages. But Leliana had her faith that this time would be different- because the Maker was smiling down upon them, and because Elissa was there. She didn’t want the burden of facing that faith anymore than she wanted the burden of shattering it.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” she said instead.

“I thought you would never ask,” Leliana replied, already on tiptoe once more to meet her halfway.


End file.
